Staying Gold

September 2024 || Maybe I don't want to get used to things, after all.

Mid-month, I boarded an early Saturday flight bound for Baltimore through turbulent skies. Just thirty minutes before, our east-facing gate had been drenched in electric orange, like sherbet on steroids. Utterly worn from the previous week, even I couldn’t miss this surprising sunrise.

In fact, I needed it.

This was a trip that, when planning, didn’t exactly make sense on paper. Out of state and brief. Expensive in a season of tightening budgets. A big occasion, solo. But in a large family all spread out, weddings and funerals are the places you count on gathering, and there’ve been all too many of the latter, lately.

I’m the oldest girl of fourteen grandchildren on my dad’s side. We stair-stepped every two years until the second to last girl came four years after her sister. Six years then passed before a whole gang of boys began to join our ranks — seven in even fewer years — until at last my youngest cousin, a girl, was born.

Between the fourteen of us, we span from high school to mid-life. Before this month, there’d been just three weddings, all of which — including my own — I attended. So when one of the gang of boys was planning an “I do” to his college sweetheart, I couldn’t miss it, even if it meant going alone. Though I certainly missed my people.

That weekend wedged itself right in between weeks full of new — and nostalgia. The turn of an academic year, especially into September, is a catapult to childhood memories. Even with all our change this year, and maybe even more so because of it, I’d felt that familiar rush of heady hope.

The new supplies and books. The spirit weeks and school events. The assignments and studying. The blank page and high of possibility.

I rode that high right onto the dance floor of a rustic barn in central Maryland. With four generations of my family in a circle, I felt again like the little girl twirling in her party dress, learning all the moves from the same great aunts and uncles I now stand taller than. Seeing wide smiles I’ve known my whole life, just a few less than before.

I’ve been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you’re gold when you’re a kid, like green. When you’re a kid everything’s new, dawn. It’s just when you get used to everything that it’s day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That’s gold. Keep that way, it’s a good way to be.

— Johnny, as written by S.E. Hinton in The Outsiders

All that life’s dealt these people I love, and still, they dance.

I come by it, honestly, I guess. That something in me that aches to not miss the sunrise despite where you might see it. To not miss out on the dance just because you don’t know the song. To not miss the flight even when it’s easier to stay home. To not miss the moment of joy for your world of hurt.

To not miss the sheer wonder of your life regardless of how mundane it actually is.

Maybe I don’t want to get used to things, after all.

📝 Writing

As promised in my most recent update:

One Year of My Pen in the Air

my non-Substack writing has gotten first dibs on my leftover brain and calendar space. Between volunteer hours at tutorial and the bigs’ new school this month, many of which were spent planning and executing a lower school school event, though, there wasn’t much left over. But it’s been great knowing that when there is time, I know where it’s going.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the only thing I allow myself to open during work hours is a blank notebook, an existing hardcopy manuscript, or Scrivener. I can free write for up to a half hour, and if it’s on an existing project, I move it where it needs to go once that session is over, but otherwise it’s allowed to just exist.

After that, I try to check the box, even if it’s only a little bit, on revisions for THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE and drafting WITH YOU EVERYWHERE. At the moment, I’m naturally more drawn to drafting, but getting face time with both manuscripts has been much-needed. There may come a time, soon, where I dig deep and only revise — should querying become an endeavor I’m ready for, again — but not yet.

In fun news, I also started a loose outline for a collection of short stories inspired by my solo time in airports, this month, which is like candy for this girl’s imagination.

📚 Reading

My reading life has been slower the last couple months (compared to July’s burst of ten books finished), but it’s been steady and good, which has certainly been the theme of this year. Our oldest read The Outsiders for class this month, and I told her I’d reread it with her because reading together is always better. Turns out, I’d never actually read it before¹, and goodness it got me in my feels!

This month we hit page 1,000 of the War and Peace read-along with

Simon Haisell

, and Hilary Mantel continues to blow me away with her writing in The Mirror and The Light. Simon recently announced his Read Along picks for 2025, the backbone (my words!) I’d say is: Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety. I’m also planning to read along with Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower and considering rereading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. It has been almost twenty-five years since I read it in 10th grade! (And this one I know I for sure read, ha!)

Speaking of Mantel, I loved this piece sharing some of her (invaluable) writing wisdom. I quickly mocked up and printed the list to keep near me while I’m working. Thank you for sharing this,

J.T. Ellison

!

🎧 Listening

That it’s officially fall has been only slightly dampened (figuratively AND literally, looking at you Helene) by the weather. But whether it feels like fall or not, yet, you can find me rotating between these three playlists:

📺 Watching

I devoured the newest season of Emily in Paris, per usual, and I’m not even ashamed to admit it. The absolute best thing to come of watching it, though, is that I’ve finally got a fire under me to pull up old hard drives and do something with the plethora of photos I took from my trip to Italy in 2010/2011.

We closed out the month with a trip to the cinema to see The Wild Robot. This was our eight year-old’s first read-the-book, then watch-the-movie experience, which was thrilling. I’d argue it’s a story as much about motherhood as anything, and made me surprisingly emotional several times. Loved it!

✨ Enjoying

I squealed when I saw Lamy’s Fall 2024 Limited Edition AL-star fountain pens, which have promptly joined my collection, along with inks to match. I went with this gorgeous Jane Austen green by De Atramentis and Australis Rose by Robert Oster.

My 2024 Season by Season Weekly Planner by Cultivate What Matters is the best of everything I’ve ever needed over my many years of using paper planners, fine-tuning what works best for my brain and my life. Built in structure. Both month and week at a glance with days across and hours down, perfect for time blocking — and space before each week to brain dump, track, list, or whatever you please. Quarterly refreshes and ideal week planning. It’s a workhorse, and I just purchased my new one for next year, along with my 2025 One-Year PowerSheets!

This pumpkin bread recipe is the one I come back to, again and again. Classic, simple, and always tasty. We often make muffins and add chocolate chips to the top of half, since some like them with and some without! I’ve got a batch in the oven, as I type, and the house smells just like fall should.

This next month promises so much good I can hardly stand it, but I’m going in with my heart and hands open. Well, when I’ve not got a warm mug of chai or coffee in at least one of them, that is.

Here’s to living dawn and not just day, friends.

Until next time,

1. I’ve started making a list of these books. You know, the ones you somehow were supposed to have read in like middle or high school or college but somehow didn’t? Like — you know enough about them to think you did, but actually haven’t. Please tell me I’m not alone in having books like this!